The EU would be "impoverished" if the UK left the bloc, says Nick Clegg

The EU would be "impoverished" if the UK left the bloc, says Nick Clegg

A BRITISH exit from the European Union would "impoverish" the continent as a whole, Nick Clegg has warned.

PUBLISHED: 16:55, Thu, Nov 14, 2013

Nick Clegg says the EU would be "impoverished" if the UK left [PA]

The Deputy Prime Minister said the Conservatives' "flirtations" with withdrawal would not succeed and claimed the EU was needed to help secure the UK's economic recovery and beat crime.

Mr Clegg, speaking after bilateral talks with his Irish counterpart Eamon Gilmore, said: "Reform is one thing, flirting with exit - which is what the Conservative Party appears to be doing - is something that I think, if it were ever to happen, which I don't believe it will, would be hugely damaging to the United Kingdom.

"I think it would be damaging to Ireland since we're joined at the hip economically and I think it would also in many ways impoverish the European Union as a whole.

"I don't believe it will happen but we have to win and remake the case constantly that in a footloose, fancy-free world of globalisation where environmental damage knows no borders, criminals don't recognise boundaries, where corporate might can affect one continent to the next, it just makes sense for us in the European Union to do things together that we couldn't possibly do on our own."

Mr Clegg said that next year's European elections needed to sharpen focus on increasing the continent's competitiveness as challenges emerge from Asia and Latin America.

James Wharton's Private Member's Bill for a referendum returns to the Commons next week [PA]

His words come as Government-backed moves to give voters a say on whether Britain remains in the EU return to the House of Commons next week.

Tory backbencher James Wharton's Private Member's Bill for a referendum will be subject to further debate.

Fellow Conservative MP Adam Afriyie has warned that the Tories risk losing the 2015 election if they do not bring forward the vote from 2017 to next year.

Mr Clegg admitted that reforms were necessary within the bloc, highlighting how it took 15 years to answer a question about chocolate.

The Liberal Democrat leader said: "Of course the European Union needs to be reformed. When I worked in the European Union I remember it took 15 years to decide the definition of chocolate and a chocolate directive. Anything that takes a decade and a half to define what chocolate is is in need of reform, much as Whitehall is in need of reform, much as Westminster is in need of reform."

David Blunkett has warned there could be riots if Roma migrants refuse to adapt to the UK culture [PA]

Today Mr Clegg also insisted that Roma immigrants must respect the British way of life amid warnings that community tensions could spark riots.

He said he recognised concerns raised by former home secretary David Blunkett, whose Sheffield Brightside constituency neighbours his own in Sheffield Hallam.

The Labour MP said he feared problems in the Page Hall area of the city, where Roma migrants from Slovakia have set up home, could escalate into violence.

He also accused the Government of "burying their head in the sand" over the scale of Roma settlement in the UK.

Speaking on his regular LBC phone-in, Mr Clegg said he thought it was a good thing that the UK was an open country. But he stressed he had supported controls such as reintroducing counting in and counting out of migrants.

"Of course I am acutely aware of the tensions," Mr Clegg said. "David Blunkett has been very outspoken about it and he has every reason to be concerned as the constituency MP.

"I am not sure bluntly if it helps very many people in Page Hall for him to then lurch around saying it is the Government's fault and it is all because of the Government.

"There is a real dilemma.... when you get communities coming into a part of our country and then they behave in a way that people find quite difficult to accept.

"They behave in a way that people find sometimes intimidating, sometimes offensive.

"I think it is quite right that people should say, and on this if not many other things I actually agree with David Blunkett, we have every right to say if you are in Britain and you are coming to live in Britain and you are bringing up a family here, you have got to be sensitive to the way that life is lived in this country.

"If you do things that people find intimidating - I know that David is concerned about large numbers of people hanging around on the streets in Page Hall - then you have got to listen to what the people of the community have got to say.

"At the end of the day the solution to these things, whether it is in Page Hall or in Slough, is of course people, human beings, talking to each other across community divides."